How AppFolio is Revolutionizing Property Management Software with AI

AppFolio is the technology leader powering the future of the real estate industry. Our innovative platform — AppFolio Property Manager — is an all-in-one property management solution designed for residential, commercial, student housing, community association, and affordable housing property managers. It includes tools for accounting, marketing, leasing, maintenance, communications, and more — in one powerful platform. 

Property management companies face a significant challenge in achieving operational efficiency when many of their core processes rely heavily on manual, repetitive tasks. A 2023 survey of property management employees found that 36% of their time is spent on “busy work.” The consensus at the time was that 15 hours per week — or 38% of a 40-hour work week —  could be optimized or streamlined through technology. 

These figures underscored a growing enthusiasm for AI’s ability to bring more efficiency to property management roles, and new data proves optimism still abounds: 28% of survey respondents for AppFolio’s 2025 Property Management Benchmark Report say they are looking towards AI tools to boost operational efficiency this year. With excitement and use of AI on the rise, now is the time to look internally at your own operations and consider how artificial intelligence can improve efficiencies. 

But while AI has become a buzzword recently, AppFolio has been investing heavily in the space since before the term entered the zeitgeist, with tools like the AI Leasing Assistant Lisa, Smart Bill Entry, Bank Feed, Smart Maintenance, FolioGuard Smart Ensure, and many more.

It’s important to mention that AI isn’t brand new to the industry. Many of the tools mentioned above have been around for several years already. However, the rapid advancement in generative AI ushered in by large language models is revolutionizing the way the technology is woven into property management software, and ultimately the user experience.

The Siloed Approach

In the early stages of the real estate industry’s adoption of AI over the past few years, a siloed or fragmented approach has been the main way to incorporate artificial intelligence into business solutions.

The earliest AI-driven solutions have mainly been developed in isolation, each addressing a specific property management workflow. Think AI-powered leasing chatbots, maintenance coordination, and bookkeeping. But while ‌individual workflows benefit from AI in terms of automation — leading to greater efficiency and employee satisfaction — until recently, individual AI tools haven’t been able to “talk” to one another. A missing linchpin has prevented a fully unified technology experience.

Foundational AI

AppFolio is pioneering a more holistic approach to AI. Rather than merely incorporating the technology into specific tools or workflows, AppFolio’s foundational approach to AI aims to construct a unified, interconnected system — one that’s built on a single, powerful platform with AI integrated throughout. Here, a singular platform allows AI to operate within every process, share information, and connect the dots between all your property management workflows: from lead to lease, to maintenance, accounting, communications, moveout, and everything in between. It's a symphony of interconnected systems working in harmony that results in greater efficiency, productivity, and satisfaction — for both property managers and owners. The linchpin missing from the siloed approach is found here, allowing a novel new way for users to interact with software: the conversational interface.

The Siloed Approach The Power of Embedded AI

This foundational approach lends itself to innovations like AppFolio Realm-X — the first embedded, generative AI for property management software. But what exactly does that mean?

Generative AI serves as the underlying technology for a conversational interface. When built into your primary property management software, a conversational interface  allows for direct interaction with all the information stored within your business’ database, or system of record, in plain language, essentially serving as a personal assistant or co-pilot. Rather than having to manually navigate through your primary property management platform to find information, a conversational interface allows you to ask your property management software a direct question like “What are all the unassigned work orders?” or “how many available 3 bedroom units do we have?” You can direct your AI copilot to initiate actions or processes on your behalf, complete tasks, and draft and send communication. An example of this would be using the AI to write a notice to all residents at a certain property about an elevator outage. A single platform with AI embedded throughout can take information from one part of the platform — maintenance requests or work orders — and apply it to another part — resident communications. 

Another impressive aspect of embedded generative AI is the ability to teach your property management platform to automatically complete common workflows on demand — like everything that encompasses the move-out process, for example.  

By offloading much of what would be considered “tedious,” property managers can have — as AppFolio’s VP of Engineering Matthew Baird describes —  “more time to strategize, build relationships, learn new skills… essentially, find more meaning in their day-to-day. ”.  

Indeed, 75% of AppFolio Realm-X users agree that the technology reduces busywork, saving users 10-plus hours per week in 2024. 

For a deeper dive into AI and property management, we invite you to check out our Top Floor podcast episode titled AI-Empowered: Getting Ahead of the Next Technological Revolution with Futurist Zack Kass. The episode features an interview with Zack Kass, Futurist and Former Head of Go To Market for OpenAI, the company beyond ChatGPT. You can also check out our AI guide, Becoming AI-ready. This definitive, up-to-date guide covers everything property management companies like yours need to know now to become AI-ready so you’ll be prepared for a rapidly evolving future. Finally, we invite you to explore AppFolio Realm, where our full suite of AppFolio AI capabilities — including our conversational interface AppFolio Realm-X — unite to create a one-of-a-kind, holistic AI-powered property management experience.